The film version of London Road premieres on 9 June before its general release on 12 June
London Road premieres on 9 June via NT Live and is on general release from 12 June.
Star rating: 3 stars ★ ★ ★
“Everyone is very, very nervous,” runs a repeated line through one of London Road’s songs. In the 2011 musical by Alecky Blythe and Adam Cork, Blythe had taken her approach to verbatim theatre – recording interviews with real people, and having actors reproduce the same dialogue with all the hesitations, repetitions and other vocal tics intact – and with Cork’s music, converted it into what has been described as a “community oratorio”.
The production – set in and around London Road in Ipswich, Suffolk during the serial murders and subsequent trial of killer Steve Wright in 2006 to 2008 – went on to transfer from the Cottesloe to the Olivier stage, and now moves on to the big screen with a film version starring Olivia Colman and Anita Dobson. And those who loved the stage production are now the ones who are nervous – could such a different, such an intimate piece survive the transition?
Director Rufus Norris – who directed the stage version, and is now of course the National’s new artistic director – has wisely recrafted some of the play’s structure for film. New material goes back to previously unused portions of Blythe’s interviews, as well as news coverage.
Clips of news coverage, a staple of exposition sequences in film and TV, thus open the movie in a fairly conventional way – until the newscasters’ voices start rising and falling musically, until the journalists form the first of what will eventually become a recurring Greek chorus of the media. It’s almost like seeing an episode of an ‘AutoTune the News’ video without the AutoTune. While it doesn’t quite work, it at least sets out the film’s stall – this is a real life event, twisted ever so slightly.
Indeed, throughout, the musical sequences are by far the most effective of the film. While their reliance on the cadences of speech lend Cork’s songs a detached, staccato air, the combination of stylised lyrics with Javier de Frutos’ choreography lends ‘Everyone Is Very Very Nervous’ and, particularly, ‘It Could Be Him’ an appeal that is distinct to cinema as opposed to the National stage.
Less successful are the sequences spoken to camera. Presented in the same vérité style as a documentary would, the combination of documentary visuals with the hyper-realism of Blythe’s transcribed dialogue means that the artifice of placing actors in those roles makes for uncomfortable viewing. It is as if the balance of reality and stagecraft that made London Road such a success on the stage has been thrown off kilter.
And the lack of balance makes its way into the casting. Olivia Colman is her usual sublime self as Julie, the most visible of London Road’s residents and the closest the film has to a central character, while Paul Thornley’s Dodge, a role expanded substantially from the same actor’s onstage portrayal, is a portrayal of a man who is far more complex than first impressions may suggest.
But Anita Dobson’s June, whose quiet comedy would work well in a more traditional telling of similar material, can’t help but feel out of place. And while Tom Hardy’s serial-killer obsessed taxi driver provides tension in a film that rarely has any, his is the weakest vocal performance and one that only works at all due to the skill of Clare Burt as his passenger (reprising her role of Jan, and the strongest of all the original cast members).
Yet for all its difficulties and struggles to adapt to a new medium, there is much to love about London Road – not least its audacity in even attempting to transfer to the big screen. With both The Last Five Years and now this musical making the leap to cinema, there is a sign that film-makers are casting their nets wider. Musical theatre encompasses such a variety of style, tone and content on stage: it seems that cinema may finally be catching up.
Scott Matthewman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JncGIdfQLAs
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